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Post by Defenestrated Fipplebox on Nov 21, 2023 18:47:24 GMT
People should be free to stand, however frivolous some people on here may think they are. If the electorate agree then they'll get a piddly squat number of votes. Charging high amounts is a way for parties to keep politics within their cabal, anti-democratic and self-serving, typical of our political culture at the moment. It's also very ironic that an ex-member of the OMRLP is one of those interested in keeping so called frivolous candidatures to a minimum.
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Post by greenhert on Nov 21, 2023 18:48:47 GMT
The problem of excessive frivolous candidatures has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished. Election deposits do not solve this problem. Instead we need to scrap the deposit entirely (Ireland scrapped it for the most part; only Independent candidates who cannot find 30 assentors have to pay it nowadays) and impose tougher signature requirements, e.g. increasing the requirement for nomination from 10 signatures to 100. |
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Nov 21, 2023 18:58:55 GMT
The problem of excessive frivolous candidatures has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished. Election deposits do not solve this problem. Instead we need to scrap the deposit entirely (Ireland scrapped it for the most part; only Independent candidates who cannot find 30 assentors have to pay it nowadays) and impose tougher signature requirements, e.g. increasing the requirement for nomination from 10 signatures to 100. And imprisonment for anyone found to have forged an assenting elector's signature. |
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Post by greenhert on Nov 21, 2023 19:06:23 GMT
Election deposits do not solve this problem. Instead we need to scrap the deposit entirely (Ireland scrapped it for the most part; only Independent candidates who cannot find 30 assentors have to pay it nowadays) and impose tougher signature requirements, e.g. increasing the requirement for nomination from 10 signatures to 100. And imprisonment for anyone found to have forged an assenting elector's signature. We already have this in effect, as the cases of Steve Uncles and Bob Spink demonstrate (although Mr Spink's custodial sentence was suspended). |
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 14,762 
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Post by J.G.Harston on Nov 21, 2023 19:28:07 GMT
The problem of excessive frivolous candidatures has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished. Election deposits do not solve this problem. Instead we need to scrap the deposit entirely (Ireland scrapped it for the most part; only Independent candidates who cannot find 30 assentors have to pay it nowadays) and impose tougher signature requirements, e.g. increasing the requirement for nomination from 10 signatures to 100. Local election signitures have gone down from 10 to 2, so either Parliamentary signitures should also go down to 2, or stay at 10 to be vaugely proportional to the same fraction of the electorate. |
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Post by gwynthegriff on Nov 21, 2023 19:48:22 GMT
Put the deposit up yes, but 5% is about right. Very few "frivolous" candidates ever reach it, and a 10% threshold would only deter legitimate serious parties from giving us more choice. Time to wheel out (again) my case for a sliding scale deposit. Poll 5% you get the whole deposit back. Get 0.1% you forfeit 99.2% of it. Never seems right to me that a Green candidate who gets 4.9% and an "Elvis Party" candidate who gets 0.1% each forfeit £500. [The percentage and the deposit figure can, of course, be varied.] |
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Post by greenhert on Nov 21, 2023 20:39:02 GMT
Put the deposit up yes, but 5% is about right. Very few "frivolous" candidates ever reach it, and a 10% threshold would only deter legitimate serious parties from giving us more choice. Time to wheel out (again) my case for a sliding scale deposit. Poll 5% you get the whole deposit back. Get 0.1% you forfeit 99.2% of it. Never seems right to me that a Green candidate who gets 4.9% and an "Elvis Party" candidate who gets 0.1% each forfeit £500. [The percentage and the deposit figure can, of course, be varied.] Interestingly, South Korea has a variant of this for its FPTP seats. The 15,000,000 won (£9,235.79!) deposit is fully refunded for candidates who receive >15% of the votes cast but half-refunded for candidates polling between 10 and 15% of the votes cast. |
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Post by Adam in Stroud on Nov 21, 2023 20:46:07 GMT
People should be free to stand, however frivolous some people on here may think they are. If the electorate agree then they'll get a piddly squat number of votes. Charging high amounts is a way for parties to keep politics within their cabal, anti-democratic and self-serving, typical of our political culture at the moment. It's also very ironic that an ex-member of the OMRLP is one of those interested in keeping so called frivolous candidatures to a minimum. I tend to agree. In any case, I don't think the deposit is a deterrent to the genuinely frivolous, because in a reasonably prosperous country a sum of, say, £1,000 is no more than the cost of the annual holiday - if someone has either a bee in their bonnet or just thinks it'd be a hoot to stand on the podium wearing a bucket they can find that sort of sum out of their income without it hurting much. You'd have to put it up to say £10k, at which point it would start to be a serious problem for a lot of small parties and maybe some big ones. Which is where the deposit system already is an issue - as gwynthegriff notes, it's relatively easy for, say, the Green Party, Reform or in some areas the LDs to lose our deposits, but to be a national party you need to stand in all or at least most constituencies. It's the risk of losing 650 deposits that is a major disincentive to any serious new party forming. The crackpots don't care, one candidate in the PM's constituency, or standing against the Speaker, is perfectly affordable. Billionaires playing silly buggers (e.g. Goldsmith) aren't bothered either. |
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Harry Hayfield
Green
Cavalier Gentleman (as in 17th century Cavalier)
Posts: 2,922
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Post by Harry Hayfield on Nov 21, 2023 20:47:00 GMT
I used to be so wedded and stuck to £500/5%. Can't deny that £500 being the case for 40-odd years doesn't quite make sense with everything else increasing either in cost or allowance. I like the islington idea of also bringing km² into candidate spending. From my "previous life", I know that some local parties really struggle to meet the deposit. Really struggle. I remember the same names being mentioned as "good" for donations and helping hands, so I'm aware of the consequences of raising the deposit. I'm thinking maybe £1,250 with a 7.25% threshold? Abolish the depoist and replace it with 1% of the electorate signing nomination papers equals a duly nominated candidate. |
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Post by johnloony on Nov 21, 2023 20:50:30 GMT
Election deposits do not solve this problem. Instead we need to scrap the deposit entirely (Ireland scrapped it for the most part; only Independent candidates who cannot find 30 assentors have to pay it nowadays) and impose tougher signature requirements, e.g. increasing the requirement for nomination from 10 signatures to 100. Local election signitures have gone down from 10 to 2, so either Parliamentary signitures should also go down to 2, or stay at 10 to be vaugely proportional to the same fraction of the electorate. The reason why the number of nominations for local elections has gone down to 2 instead of 10 is because of the pandemic. The reason it hasn’t gone up to 10 again after the pandemic is because there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in the number of minor or frivolous candidates. In parliamentary elections there has been. |
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Post by greenchristian on Nov 21, 2023 20:53:18 GMT
Put the deposit up yes, but 5% is about right. Very few "frivolous" candidates ever reach it, and a 10% threshold would only deter legitimate serious parties from giving us more choice. Time to wheel out (again) my case for a sliding scale deposit. Poll 5% you get the whole deposit back. Get 0.1% you forfeit 99.2% of it. Never seems right to me that a Green candidate who gets 4.9% and an "Elvis Party" candidate who gets 0.1% each forfeit £500. [The percentage and the deposit figure can, of course, be varied.] Raising the deposit substantially without this kind of reform will have the main effect of reducing the number of Green candidates at Parliamentary level (and possibly a lesser effect on the number of Lib Dem and Reform candidates), whilst making only a tiny impact on the number of frivolous candidates. The original suggestion of raising it to £1500 or £2000 would mean that it costs as much to be on a Westminster ballot paper as it currently costs to run a full-on council election campaign in the largest council wards in the country. In that circumstance I doubt that we'd be able to stand candidates in more than one of the Coventry constituencies. It's also worth noting that a sliding scale of deposits will substantially reduce the number of recounts at Westminster elections - since there's no longer a reason for a party on 4.9% to call for one. |
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Post by johnloony on Nov 21, 2023 21:11:44 GMT
People should be free to stand, however frivolous some people on here may think they are. If the electorate agree then they'll get a piddly squat number of votes. Charging high amounts is a way for parties to keep politics within their cabal, anti-democratic and self-serving, typical of our political culture at the moment. It's also very ironic that an ex-member of the OMRLP is one of those interested in keeping so called frivolous candidatures to a minimum. Not to a minimum, but to a reasonable and manageable level. The number of candidates in the 1983 general election was about 2,600. In 1987, after the deposit was increased from£150 to £500, it was about 2,200. Since then, the number has ratcheted up each time and has now got to about 3,300. The deposit still calls itself “£500” but it’s worth less than £200 in terms of what it was in the mid-1980s. When the law was changed in 1986 to make it £500 (and bear in mind that the original proposal was that it be £1,000 (it was reduced to £500 in the committee stage)), it would not have been at all controversial or unreasonable oif there had been a clause in the legislation that it be index-linked and go up with inflation each year, just like (frig zumple) prescription charges go up each year. If we get to the stage where parliamentary elections routinely have 7 or 8 candidates instead of 5 or 6, or if parliamentary by-elections have 15 instead of 8 or 10, then it is annoying and awkward in purely practical terms like folding and unfolding ballot papers, piling them up, voters dealing with the lists of candidates and parties, and so on. In the OMRLP each candidate has to pay his/her own deposit. I used to think that the process of collecting 10 nomination signatures was pointless, because it’s a hassle which takes about 2 hours and doesn’t genuinely show real widespread support for a candidate, but actually it’s a useful filter to make sure that a candidate / agent / party is able and willing to make the effort to arrange a nomination rather than just taking the process for granted. Also, a basic minimum effort in doing an election campaign (the sort of thing I did in my three general elections (but not by-elections)) included arranging for the printing and delivery of 55,000 election leaflets. Cost about £300 to £600, depending on the quality of the paper. Time to bundle 55,000 leaflets into bundles of 100, ready for the royal mail, about 17 hours. If a party or a candidate can afford the expense of doing a basic leaflet (one per household) at the cost of a few hundred pounds, they can afford £500 for the deposit. If they think they can just swan in and get their name on the ballot paper, without bothering to do any meaningful campaigning or leafleting, then they should pay a burden as a bit of a deterrent. |
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 14,762
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Post by J.G.Harston on Nov 21, 2023 21:16:02 GMT
Local election signitures have gone down from 10 to 2, so either Parliamentary signitures should also go down to 2, or stay at 10 to be vaugely proportional to the same fraction of the electorate. The reason why the number of nominations for local elections has gone down to 2 instead of 10 is because of the pandemic. The reason it hasn’t gone up to 10 again after the pandemic is because there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in the number of minor or frivolous candidates. In parliamentary elections there has been. Who defines "frivolous"? Who gets to decide who defines "frivolous"? Who gets to decide who gets to decide who gets to define "frivolous"? Who gets to decide who gets to decide who gets to decide who gets to define "frivolous"? |
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Post by doktorb🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️ on Nov 21, 2023 21:20:26 GMT
People should be free to stand, however frivolous some people on here may think they are. If the electorate agree then they'll get a piddly squat number of votes. Charging high amounts is a way for parties to keep politics within their cabal, anti-democratic and self-serving, typical of our political culture at the moment. It's also very ironic that an ex-member of the OMRLP is one of those interested in keeping so called frivolous candidatures to a minimum. I agree to a point though I also remember Davıd Boothroyd on the subject of limiting numbers on ballot papers. It's a balance to be struck. I believe that we shouldn't have any limit to the number of candidates on a Westminster by-election However, as I tried to say earlier, it's unavoidable to accept that the deposit hasn't increased in 40 odd years and that isn't acceptable either. The cost of standing for election, in all measures, has increased. The deposit should too. |
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Post by timrollpickering on Nov 21, 2023 21:22:04 GMT
People should be free to stand, however frivolous some people on here may think they are. If the electorate agree then they'll get a piddly squat number of votes. Charging high amounts is a way for parties to keep politics within their cabal, anti-democratic and self-serving, typical of our political culture at the moment. It's also very ironic that an ex-member of the OMRLP is one of those interested in keeping so called frivolous candidatures to a minimum. Standing for election gives you a platform and access to free public resources. It's not just the freepost but also the media platform candidature brings. It's perfectly right that there should be a protection against this being abused - and an assessment as to whether the current arrangements are too lax. |
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 14,762
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Post by J.G.Harston on Nov 21, 2023 21:26:13 GMT
I used to be so wedded and stuck to £500/5%. Can't deny that £500 being the case for 40-odd years doesn't quite make sense with everything else increasing either in cost or allowance. I like the islington idea of also bringing km² into candidate spending. From my "previous life", I know that some local parties really struggle to meet the deposit. Really struggle. I remember the same names being mentioned as "good" for donations and helping hands, so I'm aware of the consequences of raising the deposit. I'm thinking maybe £1,250 with a 7.25% threshold? Abolish the depoist and replace it with 1% of the electorate signing nomination papers equals a duly nominated candidate. That would require a longer nominating period in order to collect the 800 signitures. |
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Post by timrollpickering on Nov 21, 2023 21:26:25 GMT
Abolish the depoist and replace it with 1% of the electorate signing nomination papers equals a duly nominated candidate. Hello from the third largest constituency in the country. Do you have any idea how easy it is to collect 980 signatures? Especially in a snap election when the candidate may not be confirmed until very late in the day? Are you volunteering to take on this task? And also hello from the largest London Assembly constituency. 4,947 signatures please. |
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Post by timrollpickering on Nov 21, 2023 21:31:43 GMT
Local election signitures have gone down from 10 to 2, so either Parliamentary signitures should also go down to 2, or stay at 10 to be vaugely proportional to the same fraction of the electorate. The reason why the number of nominations for local elections has gone down to 2 instead of 10 is because of the pandemic. The reason it hasn’t gone up to 10 again after the pandemic is because there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in the number of minor or frivolous candidates. In parliamentary elections there has been. Slight correction. It reverted to ten for 2022 and up until just before the regular May 2023 elections. (I agented for a by-election at the end of March and it was definitely still ten then.) It's a relatively recent decision to cut to 2 for council candidates permanently, not a continuation of the covid cut. The 2021 cut was initially a temporary measure because of the difficulties of collection when there were still lockdown restrictions. The 2023 cut is not exactly the same - here in London the Mayor of London has reverted to ten from each borough & the City. And in 2021 the Mayor of London absolutely did attract a lot more attention seekers than usual. (I don't know what the position is for other metro Mayors or Police & Crime Commissioners.) |
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carlton43
Reform Party
Posts: 50,893
Member is Online
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Post by carlton43 on Nov 21, 2023 21:32:02 GMT
The problem of excessive frivolous candidatures has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished. Election deposits do not solve this problem. Instead we need to scrap the deposit entirely (Ireland scrapped it for the most part; only Independent candidates who cannot find 30 assentors have to pay it nowadays) and impose tougher signature requirements, e.g. increasing the requirement for nomination from 10 signatures to 100. On the contrary, I opt for much higher deposits and to abandon the absurdity of the silly hurdle of assentors who add nothing and protect from nothing. |
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J.G.Harston
Lib Dem
Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
Posts: 14,762
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Post by J.G.Harston on Nov 21, 2023 21:37:25 GMT
Also, a basic minimum effort in doing an election campaign (the sort of thing I did in my three general elections (but not by-elections)) included arranging for the printing and delivery of 55,000 election leaflets. Cost about £300 to £600, depending on the quality of the paper. Time to bundle 55,000 leaflets into bundles of 100, ready for the royal mail, about 17 hours. If a party or a candidate can afford the expense of doing a basic leaflet (one per household) at the cost of a few hundred pounds, they can afford £500 for the deposit. If they think they can just swan in and get their name on the ballot paper, without bothering to do any meaningful campaigning or leafleting, then they should pay a burden as a bit of a deterrent. The spending limit gets regularly reviewed (as a couple of days ago), the simplest thing is to make the deposit a fixed proportion of the spending limit. There's too many bits of regulation where much of the same thng all has different specifications rather than them all refering to a single specification. Voting has a specified age, controlled purchases has a specified age, jury duty has a specified age, election deposit has a specified amount, spendng limit has a specified amount, MP's salary has a specified amount. Remove the duplication and make "if an adult", "fraction of spending limit", "multiple of Head of Home Civil Service", etc. |
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